MTN signed a multi-year agreement with Ericsson to implement, support and manage Ericsson's Order to Cash suite. This solution enables MTN to standardize the customer experience of its products and services in all the markets it is operational.

As part of the agreement, Ericsson will be responsible for the replacement of all legacy infrastructure with its new Charging System, Ericsson Multi Activation and Ericsson Multi Mediation across all MTN operations, enabling customers to activate new services more efficiently and to better monitor their data cost and usage. It will also enable MTN to respond more efficiently to customer related complaints.

Ericsson will support, operate and manage this suite of products to ensure the benefits are realized across all MTN operations. Ericsson's Managed Services will allow for an agile launch of services, thus increasing MTN's capacity for innovation and speed that are essential for a sustainable and successful business differentiation.

Jyoti Desai, Group CTIO MTN said: The new Ericsson Charging System will enable a host of new services like catalogue orchestrated charging, flexible refill and community charging, among several other different voice and data offerings for MTN's over 220 million prepaid customers. Multi Mediation supports the retrieval and processing of user data from all network nodes, so that such data can be made available to the relevant IT back-end systems and billed in real time. Multi Activation provides MTN with fully automated real-time fulfillment capabilities.

Seckin Arikan, Vice President and Head of Global Accounts MTN said: "Operators need to be fast, flexible and in control to deliver great experiences to their customers, operate efficiently and deliver innovative new offerings to stand out in today's marketplace. Our end-to-end solutions help operators meet these challenges by helping them quickly develop new products, new packaging as well as pricing models that target specific user preferences, reducing time-to-market. This agreement not only reinforces our partnership with MTN but places them in prime position to fulfill their strategic ambitions. Together, we will continue to develop innovative offerings suitable for all MTN operations".

Ericsson has been a long-term partner for MTN, and has provided the operator with real-time charging capabilities since 1996. MTN was one of the first customers to introduce Ericsson Pre-Paid Systems in all Africa and Middle East Operations. Today Ericsson's charging and billing solutions support more than 2 billion subscribers worldwide.